10 Worst Cars of the Millennium

Car talk ^ | 04/18/02 | Click & Clack the Tappit Brothers

[yankeedame]

What's the Worst Car of the Millennium?

The motoring public has spoken!(with actually comments by those casting their vote).

And...the winner is...

Well, you'll just have to check for yourself!

And, if you ever owned one of thse top ten heaps of the millennium, please accept our humble condolences.

10th Place: The VW Bus

"If everyone had to own one of these as a first car as I did, there would be no traffic jams anywhere. At least half of us would be so turned off by the experience of owning a car, that we would seek alternate means of transporation."

"There was no heat-- unless, that is, the auxillary gas heater caught on fire."

"The bus had no heat, blew over in the wind and used the driver's legs as its first line of defense in an accident."

"It was a death trap on the highway- you could never go fast enough. The chances were good that you'd be hit from the rear."

9th Place: Renault Dauphine

"Truly unemcumbered by the engineering process."

At the time, it cost about half the price of a Volkswagen...which was half the price of everything else. How could Renault do this? Simple. It had half as many parts."

"This car topped out at 45 mph. Since the minimum speed on the Florida Turnpike is 40, patrol cars would follow me, waiting for me to hit a hill so they could ticket me."

"From a historical perspective, it's a shame that the French spent their Marshall Plan dollars on automaking."

"A side impact by a bicycle totalled my Dauphine after only one year."

8th Place: Cadillac Cimarron

"GM thoght they could take a Chevy Cavalier, slap some Cadillac stuff on it, add an extra $5,000.00 and sell a bundle. Tragicaly enought, they pulled it off- for a while."

"Hands down, worst car for the money spent. Yugos were junk, but at least they were cheap. This heap had Caddy price tag!"

7th Place: Dodge Aspen/ Plymouth Volare

"This car began to rust while it was still in the showroom."

"After the floor boards rusted out the rear, they would fill up with water and freeze. I ended up putting soda crates on the floor in the back to keep people from falling under the car."

"The only useful purpose this car served was as the model for the car used in National Lampoon's Vacation"

"Owning a Volare was total ego death- the theme song, the vinal Landau roof, the inability to pass another car on the highway."

6th Place: Renault LeCar

"I'm convinced that the body for this car was supplied by Reynold's Aluminum."

"Our LeCar couldn't climb a hill fully loaded, so the passengers had to get out and walk up."

"I left it unlocked, and it was finally stolen. The insurance check paid for a textbook."

5th Place: Chevy Chevette

"An engine surrounded by 4 pieces of dry wall!"

"Plywood floor, printed circuit 'wiring', and no redeeming qualities. It was a 'Saturdy Night Special' from the word go."

"If I got on the Interstate without being run over, the car would creep towards 55. About an hour later, I'd reach it. Then, the shaking would begin."

4th Place: AMC Gremlin

"It was entirely possible to read a Russian novel during the pause between stepping on the gas and feeling any semblance of forward motion."

"The car had all the quality and safety of a cheap gardentractor."

3rd Place: Ford Pinto

"Dad had a baby-poop-orange pinto the year that car thieves hit our street. Although a dozen cars were stolen in one night, ours was there the next morning, on a strangely empty block."

"Remember that great Pinto bumper sticker,'Hit Me and We Blow Up Together'?"

"The car would do 75mph in 2nd gear, shaking apart and sounding like a bat out of hell. In fourth gear, the top speed was 70mph. What's wrong with this picture? You do the math."

2nd Place: Chevy Vega

"When the read end went on my Vega, the Chevy dealer accused me of racing it. Racing who? My grandfather in hs wheelchair?"

"Burned so much oil, it was single handedly responsible for the formation of OPEC."

"My Chevy Vega actualy broke in half going over railroad tracks. The whole rear end came around slightly to the front, sort of like a dog wagging its tail."

And the winner of the worst car of the millennium is...

THE YUGO

"I once tested a Yugo, during which the radio fell out, the gear shift knob came off in my hand, and I saw daylight through the strip around the windshield"

"Any time we made a right hand turn, we all had to lean to the right to prevent the drver's side rear tire from scraping against the wheel well."

"The Yugo's first stop after the showroom was he service departmnt:'Fill 'er up and replace the engine!' "

[Buggs]

Thank you for a good afternoon laugh! I drove a lime green pinto in college, and would have loved to have had that bumper sticker.

[Rule of Law]

What about any Fiat?

[pt17]

How can you have a "10 Worst Cars" list, and not have a Trabant on it?

Indeed, this 10 worst list is worthless without a Trabi. Take note authors:


The Trabant (1949 to 1989) was the GDR's answer to the Volkswagen. Intended to be economical, convenient and ubiquitous, it succeeded in being only the latter.

Despite production times from hell (the average Trabant owner waited nine years to get their lemon), the Trabi, as it was affectionately dubbed, is still one of the most common cars on the road in Eastern Germany.

Each Trabi took so long to build becauase its plastic pieces (most of the vehicle's parts, aside from the frame, hood and other necessarily strong sections, were plastic) were molded by workers running hand-operated molding systems.

Above comments by Nick Selby
ZWICKAU, Germany

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

"You're probably right, they must have been good cars, "

I don't know for sure. I was too stoned or drunk at the time to remember. As were many other of my UAW brothers and sisters.
Ahh, those were the days. In retrospect, it's amazing the damn things ran at all.
I'm glad I quit in '83.

[tacticalogic]

Add the Plymouth Cricket to that list, much worse than a Chevette.

They were pretty awful, too. I think the closet you could get to walking and still need a license plate was the BMW Isetta.

[general_re]

The B210? No way - my father bought one new in 1975, and sold it 13 years later, with well over 200,000 miles on it. For all I know, it's still running.

Ugly as sin, but just ran and ran and ran and ran. And that was with my father's idea of "maintenance", which consisted of changing the tires when white nylon patches started showing through, and changing the oil once a year, whether it needed it or not. You could have driven it through a minefield and it would have kept going.

[Poohbah]

The AMC 300 V-8 Gremlin was hell on wheels...particularly after my friend installed a turbocharger AND a supercharger on his. We joked that the only feature it needed was a self-deploying tombstone under the liftgate for when he finally drove it off a cliff/into an overpass...

[gridlock]

I remember taking my driving test in a 78 Volkswagen Campmobile Bus, complete with the curtains in the back. The police officer administering the test took one look at that vehicle and told me that if I could parallel park it, I would pass. Back in those days, in Maryland, the officer could dock you 16 points on a test where you had to score 85 or above for no reason whatsoever. Every kid flunked the test the first go round, except for me. I slicked that Bus into the parking space on the first try. Just backed it in, straightened the wheel and killed the engine. The cop just smiled and passed me. Said I made his day.

Sorry, I think the Volkswagen Bus was a great car, and you'll never change my mind!

[Thisiswhoweare]

Or a Chevy Citation. The name should have been the first clue! LOL! (but not too hard after two engines in two years.)

[GTXfan]

The hot version, called the Gordini, was something I never had the pleasure of driving. From the time that model left the showroom floor it was a collector's item.

My thoughts exactly. A buddy had an R5 Turbo that was one of the fastest vehicles at my highschool. He would race anything and usually win. But the boost was over 25psi and would burn the tires off real quick. Big horsepower and a light weight car... what a wonderful combination.

[el_chupacabra]

Proud former owner of a 1979 Ford Fairmount -- engineered using nothing but 90-degree angles. A thing of beauty.

[Grampa Dave]

What was the year that Olds came out with the phoney diesel. The engine where they put some metal sleeves into the cylinders of the GM 350 and called it a diesel.

Our company basically insisted that we get one of these creatures as our company cars for the better mileage. My car lasted longer than any of the others in the division. I actually got 20,000 miles before it blew a cylinder head mixing the coolant with oil and gas.

My company refused to sell it to a salvage yard and had a towing company return it to the local Olds dealer and drop it in their driveway. As the tow guy took the paper work into the poor OLDS dealer, the Chrysler dealer picked me up in the lot with my new Chrylser NYer. He honked the horn and waved at the Olds people as he drove us away. Needless to say, my company was a little POed about the whole thing.

[GTXfan]

When I was in high school I had an 80 Dodge Aspen with a 340 4 barrel in it. That was a fast, and fun vehicle even though it had a slushbox in it.

[sneakers]

The Gremlin was my very first car. Brand spanking new out of the showroom. Geez I loved that car! I don't think it was ugly at all. Have to admit, though; the body rusted out within four years and the transmission started to go in about five. Haven't seen one on the road in years. Guess that's why.

[Revolting cat!]

Trabant - the car even rats love!

True story (as I heard it anyway.) Trabant, made in the people's paradise of the GDR, during the 1960s if I'm not mistaken, had a body made of plastic which was loved by rats which feasted on it.

[Dust in the Wind]

My college roommate had one and I have to agree about the heat thing. At a crawl up Loveland Pass it could barely generate enough heat to keep the windshield clear of ice on the inside. Had a lot of fun in it though bumming around the schlopes. My first trip over Independence Pass was in that beast, I probably still don't understand the peril I was in. . . ;^)

This was in Colorado, USA for those that wonder.

[tacticalogic]

IIRC, the body panels weren't really plastic, but were actually cardboard, impregnated with some kind of phenol resin. They would actually start to swell up and begin to get "fuzzy" at the edges if they sat in the rain too long.

[shaggy eel]

,,, take a look at ----> www.renault.co.nz ... you'll see a model called a Clio. Believe it or not, they have a Clio with a V6 in it that is hell on wheels. It's not on that site but the Clio will give you some idea. It's virtually a replacement for the R5 Turbo/Gordini. These things (subject to availability) are about $NZ87,000.